Boris Johnson has always been Mr Teflon – but for how much longer?

Boris Johnson has always defied the political law which says that a word out of place can derail any career.

Most would-be MPs are subjected to the third degree by selection committees over whether there are any skeletons in their closets which could cause problems if they burst into the open.

Once, this would have been a matter of ill-chosen words in long-forgotten speeches or distasteful opinions voiced in little-read pamphlets. Now it could be anything posted on social media since the candidate was a teenager. Any of these could be discovered by opponents eager for dirt to torpedo their hopes of election.

When it came to Mr Johnson, though, there were barrowfuls of dodgy comments already in the open, in newspaper columns, TV appearances and even novels dating back decades, all crammed full of risque comments on race, gender, nationality and class.

All were designed to elicit snorts of laughter from readers and viewers at the time, but surely not uttered with any expectation that they would be quoted back at him years later when he was holding the highest office in the land.

So far, Johnson has been like Teflon. He was able to serve as foreign secretary despite having talked about “bongo-bongo land” and accused the president of Turkey of having over-friendly relations with a goat. He was able to become prime minister of the UK despite having published mockery of the people of Liverpool claiming “victim status” over the Hillsborough stadium disaster and a terrorist murder. He got on fine with Donald Trump despite describing him as unfit to be president.

Time after time, he has shrugged off gaffes which would have finished another politician. The question now is whether he can do the same in a climate of national mourning over the murder of a young woman walking home in the evening.

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Asked at Prime Minister’s Questions this week by Keir Starmer to join Labour in ensuring that Sarah Everard’s death was a “turning point” for the protection of women and girls, Mr Johnson agreed that the UK needed a “cultural and social  change inattitudes” and an end to “everyday casual sexism”.

Starmer welcomed the gesture. And Johnson’s aides were swift to remind reporters that the prime minister regards himself as a “feminist” and has a record of support for causes such as rape crisis centres stretching back to his time as London mayor more than 10 years ago. He has long campaigned for education for girls in developing countries. And even now, his government is conducting a major consultation on experiences of violence against women and girls, due to report in the summer ahead of the announcement of a new strategy to tackle the problem.

For many, this is difficult to square with the sniggering journalist who wrote about rating female attendees at Labour conference on his “tottymeter” or the electioneering MP who declared that “voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts”.

His press secretary absolutely refused this week to admit that he regretted any of his former comments about women, calculating no doubt that one apology would open the floodgates for thousands more.

The question is whether voters will continue to view such long-gone oafishness as irrelevant to the man Johnson is now, or whether they worry that it continues to reflect the real character of the man inside 10 Downing Street.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political editor